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Friday, June 03, 2011

See Joe blow

Meet my neighbour, Joe.

Joe “gardens,” OCD fashion, on a tiny postage-stamp plot of land right across the street from us.

Joe mows his lawn every few days to make sure it never gets longer than an inch. Where he trims it “close” (ie scalps it), like beneath the fence, you can pretty much see bare ground all the time. Even when he’s not mowing, Joe and his leaf blower are out every other day for about an hour. I kid you not.

An HOUR.

This guy probably thinks he’s a wonderful neighbour. His property sure looks neat, I’ll give him that. His friends probably think of him as a gardener and lover of nature. But what he’s doing out there is the opposite of love. This is the guy plucks the few remaining leaves off his trees in the fall so they won’t look “messy.”

And the blowing and blowing and BLOWING totally drives me nuts. He blows until there is not a stray blade of grass or leaf or petal anywhere on his property. Why not just bend over and pick them up???

We don’t have our ac units in yet, so the front door is basically open from sunrise to sunset and sometimes beyond.

Given that you can hear conversation clear across the street, the noise of the blower is almost literally DEAFENING. I went out a couple of days ago to sit and read to the kiddies on the front lawn. Two minutes later, he started up with the blowing. Argh.

It’s a high-pitched kind of sound reminiscent of a dentist drill. And, just like a dentist drill, just when you think he’s finished, he starts it up again.

Terrible, just terrible. This is the background noise to my spring, in case you’re wondering… which I just know you were.